La Jornada: Mexico cannot be late for the UN tax meeting

México must get involved in the negotiations at the United Nations on a Convention on International Tax Cooperation (https://t.ly/Lg0lG), which will resume in New York on August 3, as it is one of the largest economies in the region and, at the same time, one of the least tax collection capacity.

Mexico collected just 18.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, (https://t.ly/BokVV) below the regional average (21.7 percent) and a huge distance from the OECD (34.1). Its collection has improved in recent years, but the margin to finance development, health and education remains narrow. And dependence on oil revenues and a dominant trading partner (the US) makes it more fragile. The problem is not the lack of wealth, but that a good part of it – that of multinationals and large fortunes – escapes tax reach.

That is why what happens in August in New York is so important, since the future of the international tax architecture is debated there, which directly impacts how countries collect to finance their development. Mexico’s future stability is at stake here, beyond mere technical fiscal issues.

The World Inequality Report 2026 (https://t.ly/3zGR9) brings a figure that no Finance Ministry in Latin America should ignore: the richest 0.001 percent – ​​some 56 thousand people (https://t.ly/sps1G) – today own three times more wealth than half of humanity. For Latin America, the diagnosis is more severe (https://t.ly/WVi2W): we have the largest gaps in the world between the richest 10 percent and the poorest 50 percent – ​​in Mexico, the top decile earns about 76 times more than the poorest half.

The war in the Middle East has made everything more urgent. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz increased the cost of foreign debt (https://t.ly/OqkHg) that already suffocates 356 million Latin Americans. And while the fiscal space narrows, the war distributes profits upwards: oil companies and commercial intermediaries multiply profits; hedge funds almost doubled their positions in corn, soybean and wheat futures (https://t.ly/z0Ejt). The Icrict, an organization that I am a member of, called for taxing the extraordinary profits of those who profit from the war (https://t.ly/1DN68): that wealth is exactly what the current system does not reach.

The system has limits. The International Tax Observatory (https://t.ly/2ATb1) shows that 24 percent of the wealth offshore of Latin Americans is left out of any automatic exchange, and that 44 percent are in the United States. In fact, this country operates as the region’s new fiscal hideout – something that Mexico, due to its proximity and ties, is well aware of.

According to the most recent report from the Global Forum on Transparency in the region (https://t.ly/Zko9B), Latin American countries raised 578 million euros more due to the greater exchange of information between countries. However, this increase is uneven among the countries in the region. The ongoing negotiation at the United Nations could also help countries like Mexico to more democratically share the benefits of international information exchange.

The underlying problem is global architecture. For decades, its rules were written in the OECD, where developing countries were either absent or in the minority. Research from the International Center for Taxation and Development (https://t.ly/4UJLo) concludes that these standards yield uneven and delayed benefits. Every year about one percent of the world’s GDP flows from poor countries to rich ones. The most recent rule confirms this: the new “side-by-side” framework (https://t.ly/W0HgP) of the global minimum tax that allows the United States to apply its tax rules independently of the global minimum tax agreed in the OECD negotiations, proof that those standards are shaped by the power of each country.

The current system is not neutral: it reproduces the inequality it claims to administer. Here the perspective of Raúl Prebisch, founder of ECLAC, is once again immensely useful in illuminating the Mexican dilemma: the tax systems at the heart of peripheral capitalism that erode equality end up eroding democracy.

Mexico must arrive at the August negotiations as part of the Latin American bloc.

What should Mexico defend at the UN in August?

First of all, an ambitious convention. Current rules (based on OECD models) limit the rights to tax the profits of multinationals (https://t.ly/YICcx), given that transfer pricing rules are dissociated from economic reality and result in a fictitious transfer of profits to tax havens or the countries of residence of capital. The UN convention can change this by enshrining a fair allocation of taxation rights, including taxation of multinational companies.

Secondly, an ambitious protocol for the taxation of cross-border services, which serves as model rules, in a context of growing digitalization of the economy, to guarantee that the countries in which these services are provided and the users are located have the right to tax them.

Third, truly universal access to information sharing and interconnected records of assets and beneficial owners; public country-by-country reporting that requires multinationals to reveal how much tax they pay in each of the countries where they operate; as well as the possibility of using the information exchanged for a broader set of purposes – not just tax purposes.

And there is a concrete measure that the convention should enable: the coordination of a minimum tax of 2 percent on large fortunes, promoted by Brazil in the G-20.

According to the International Fiscal Observatory (https://t.ly/VyHt4), in the largest economies in the region it would collect about 24 billion dollars a year – 0.6 percent of their GDP; For Mexico it would be a way aimed at expanding a structurally low collection without burdening the majority.

The good news is that our region is not starting from scratch: its best instrument to make itself heard already exists. The PT-LAC –Regional Tax Cooperation Platform for Latin America and the Caribbean–, promoted by Brazil, Chile and Colombia, during my term as Minister of Finance of Colombia, and with the technical secretariat of ECLAC, has been coordinating efforts in recent years (https://t.ly/lfrFk) so that the countries of the region build common positions in negotiations as crucial as these. Countries in the region must take advantage of this space to strengthen regional interests (https://t.ly/5ULCf) and obtain a good agreement.

The moment makes it more urgent, since some governments in the region (https://t.ly/WI6f4) prefer to court Washington rather than negotiate as a bloc. Mexico experiences it firsthand: it renegotiates the T-MEC face to face with the United States (https://t.ly/UkeK-), when Trump has even said that he would prefer the agreement not to exist. Through the PT-LAC, Mexico can reach New York with its amplified voice, articulated with the G-77, and resist the old tactic of divide and rule.

Mexico can present itself as a spectator of rules written by others, or as a protagonist of the first truly global and democratic fiscal architecture. Extreme inequality is corrected with rules, information and taxes that finally reach those who have the most. Ultimately, it is about reconciling – as Prebisch wanted – the economic process with the democratic one. The appointment is in New York; Being late is not an option.

* Member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of the International Corporate Taxation System (Icrict), professor at Columbia University and former Minister of Finance of Colombia.